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Thread: Dust Particles Influence On The Weather AND Earth's Climate

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    Default Re: Dust Particles Influence On The Weather AND Earth's Climate

    A stalagmite may have solved the mystery of the Akkadian Empire's fall

    IFL Science
    Sat, 29 Dec 2018 04:36 UTC


    © Fredy Thuerig/Shutterstock

    Stalagmites are upward-growing mounds of mineral deposits that have built up due to water dripping onto the floor of a cave, and they reveal quite the history of a land.

    Around 4,200 years ago Mesopotamia's first empire, the Akkadian fell, coinciding with major transformations in Egypt and the Indus Valley, the two other great civilizations of the time. A study of stalagmites in Iran suggests a widespread climatic event may have been responsible for all three.

    Civilizations rise and fall for many reasons, and the causes of the Akkadian Empire's demise remain controversial. The coincidence of timing with far away events has led some historians to propose a climatic cause. The nature, and even existence, of this event has been unclear, however, coming as it did in the middle of the Holocene era of largely stable temperatures, with no known upsurge in volcanic activity or change in solar output.

    However, when a team led by The University of Oxford's Dr Stacy Carolin studied a stalagmite from Gol-e-Zard Cave in Iran's Alborz Mountains formed between 5,200 and 3,700 years ago they saw something certainly happened around the relevant time. The team report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences there were sharp spikes in the amount of magnesium relative to calcium 4,510 and 4,260 years ago, coinciding with slower growth and changes in the stone's oxygen isotopes. These changes lasted 110 and 290 years, respectively before the stalagmite composition returned to previous levels.


    © Zunkir via Wikimedia Commons CC-by-SA 3.0

    The Akkadian Empire was the first great empire of Mesopotamia, preceding the better known Babylonians and Sumerians. The explanation for its fall has come from mountains on the shores of the distant Caspian Sea.

    The industry and mining of ancient civilizations sometimes left its mark on the planet, but we know of no mechanism by which the Akkadians could have had an impact on such distant caves. Therefore it seems likely that whatever was causing the chemical change brought down the Akkadians, rather than their fall altering the chemistry of distant caves.

    The change in the stalagmite's composition appears to be the result of increased dust falling in the mountains, which in turn seems to be a consequence of drier conditions to the west. Today, dry years in the deserts of Syria and Iraq are associated with increased dust deposition in Tehran, just 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Gol-e-Zard. The slow growth of the stalagmite could be a sign of locally drier conditions as well.

    Sediments from the Red Sea and the Gulf of Oman, among other paleoclimatic proxies, have previously been used to suggest western Asia experienced at least one major dry period around this time, but the dating for these was too imprecise to tie them confidently to the Akkadian collapse. The stalagmites, on the other hand, have an error of just 31 years.

    There is a major debate among historians as to how much climate change has contributed to civilization collapse - one that has become hotter as it becomes more relevant for us. We don't know why Mesopotamia dried out during this period, but it seems it took down one civilization, and severely affected two others.
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    Default Re: Dust Particles Influence On The Weather AND Earth's Climate

    Another contender for the "The Stupid! It Hurts!" award:

    Harvard has formed an advisory board to begin moving forward with their plan to spray particles into the stratosphere to test the geoengineering method of dimming the sun.

    Matt Agorist
    August 3, 2019


    Harvard Scientists Funded by Bill Gates to Begin Spraying Particles Into the Sky In Experiment to Dim the Sun

    No, we are not a satire site. We are not a conspiracy theory site. The information you are about to read is factually accurate and 100% real despite the ostensible ‘skeptics’ who claim otherwise. The controversial subject of geoengineering or weather modification – which was popularized, and oversimplified with the term “chemtrails” – is once again stepping from the shadows and into the light of public scrutiny. And it may soon be a reality as Harvard scientists plan first ever experiment to spray particles in the sky to dim the sun.

    What was once a conspiracy theory is now the subject of congressional debate, peer-reviewed studies, and now a Harvard experiment. Harvard scientists will attempt to replicate the climate-cooling effect of volcanic eruptions with a world-first solar geoengineering experiment. The university announced this month that it has created an external advisory panel to examine the potential ethical, environmental and geopolitical impacts of this geoengineering project, which has been developed by the university’s researchers.

    According to Nature Magazine, Louise Bedsworth, executive director of the California Strategic Growth Council, a state agency that promotes sustainability and economic prosperity, will lead the Harvard advisory panel, the university said on 29 July. The other seven members include Earth-science researchers and specialists in environmental and climate law and policy.

    What was once a conspiracy theory will soon be a reality—any day now.

    Known as the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx), the experiment will spray calcium carbonate particles high above the earth to mimic the effects of volcanic ash blocking out the sun to produce a cooling effect.

    The experiment was announced in Nature magazine last year, who was one of few outlets to look into this unprecedented step toward geoengineering the planet.
    If all goes as planned, the Harvard team will be the first in the world to move solar geoengineering out of the lab and into the stratosphere, with a project called the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx). The first phase — a US$3-million test involving two flights of a steerable balloon 20 kilometres above the southwest United States — could launch as early as the first half of 2019. Once in place, the experiment would release small plumes of calcium carbonate, each of around 100 grams, roughly equivalent to the amount found in an average bottle of off-the-shelf antacid. The balloon would then turn around to observe how the particles disperse.
    Naturally, the experiment is concerning to many people, including environmental groups, who, according to Nature, say such efforts are a dangerous distraction from addressing the only permanent solution to climate change: reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.

    The idea of injecting particles into the atmosphere to cool the earth also seems outright futile considering what scientists are trying to mimic—volcanic eruptions. If we look at the second largest eruption of the 20th century, Mount Pinatubo, which erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it injected 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide aerosols into the stratosphere. Scientists from the USGS estimated that this 20 million tons only lowered the temperature of the planet by about 1°F (0.5°C) and this only lasted a year because the particles eventually fell to back to Earth.

    The Harvard team, led by scientists Frank Keutsch and David Keith, has been working on the SCoPEx project for several years but they haven’t always been in total agreement. In fact, as Nature reported, Keutsch—who is not a climate scientist—previously thought the idea to be “totally insane.” But he’s since changed his mind.

    As Nature reports:
    When he saw Keith talk about the SCoPEx idea at a conference after starting at Harvard in 2015, he says his initial reaction was that the idea was “totally insane”. Then he decided it was time to engage. “I asked myself, an atmospheric chemist, what can I do?” He joined forces with Keith and Anderson, and has since taken the lead on the experimental work.
    Adding to the questionable nature of this experiment is the fact that it is largely funded by none other than Microsoft co-founder, Bill Gates. Gates is no stranger to funding controversial experiments as he’s publicly funded many of them including one that would implant devices into babies to automatically give them vaccines.

    While the Harvard team’s experiment may sound like something out of a dystopian science fiction movie, the reality is that it has long been on the table of governments and think tanks from around the world. In fact, just last November, a study published in Environmental Research Letters, talked about doing the exact same thing—geoengineering and planes spraying particulates into the atmosphere to curb global warming.

    What’s more, that study echoed the sentiments of then-CIA director John Brennan when he addressed the Council on Foreign Relations in 2016, detailing a similar process of spraying chemical particulates in the atmosphere to cool the planet.

    At the meeting, Brennan addressed instability and transnational threats to global security at a meeting with the Council on Foreign Relations. During his long-winded talk of threats to US interests and how the largely CIA-created ISIL threat is impacting the world, Brennan brought up the topic of geoengineering.
    Another example is the array of technologies—often referred to collectively as geoengineering—that potentially could help reverse the warming effects of global climate change. One that has gained my personal attention is stratospheric aerosol injection, or SAI, a method of seeding the stratosphere with particles that can help reflect the sun’s heat, in much the same way that volcanic eruptions do.
    Brennan went on to echo the calls from some scientists who have called for aerial spraying.
    An SAI program could limit global temperature increases, reducing some risks associated with higher temperatures and providing the world economy additional time to transition from fossil fuels. The process is also relatively inexpensive—the National Research Council estimates that a fully deployed SAI program would cost about $10 billion yearly.
    Again, this is not some conspiracy theory. Watch him say all of this in the video below starting at the 12:05 marker.

    The extent to which Brennan talked about stratospheric aerosol injection shows that he and the CIA have likely been considering this for some time.

    Although we are hearing more and more talk about geoengineering, it has been around for a very long time and not just in the realm of conspiracy theories. In fact, scientists have already suggested that it could be going on right now, unintentionally.

    Researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are suggesting contrails from airplanes may be inadvertently geoengineering the skies.

    Chuck Long is a researcher with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory at the University of Colorado in Boulder. At the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in 2015, Long and his team released their paper, “Evidence of Clear-Sky Daylight Whitening: Are we already conducting geoengineering?” The analysis found that vapor from airplanes may be altering the climate through accidental geoengineering.

    To be clear, no one here is claiming to be an expert on climate change or the effects of geoengineering. But one thing is clear and it’s the fact that there is still much to be debated and learned before humans deliberately begin altering Earth’s climate. Aside from doing nothing to curb carbon emissions, if we are so quick to jump on this method, it could set off a chain reaction that could prove to be catastrophic.


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    Default Re: Dust Particles Influence On The Weather AND Earth's Climate

    Plastic particles falling out of sky with snow in the Arctic

    Roger Harrabin BBC
    Wed, 14 Aug 2019 08:29 UTC


    Fragments of plastic are found at high concentrations in Arctic seawater © ALICE TREVAIL

    Even in the Arctic, microscopic particles of plastic are falling out of the sky with snow, a study has found.

    The scientists said they were shocked by the sheer number of particles they found: more than 10,000 of them per litre in the Arctic.

    It means that even there, people are likely to be breathing in microplastics from the air - though the health implications remain unclear.

    The region is often seen as one of the world's last pristine environments.

    A German-Swiss team of researchers has published the work in the journal Science Advances.

    The scientists also found rubber particles and fibres in the snow.

    How did the researchers carry out the study?
    Researchers collected snow samples from the Svalbard islands using a low-tech method - a dessert spoon and a flask.

    In the laboratory at Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven they discovered far more contaminating particles than they'd expected.

    Many were so small that it was hard to ascertain where they had come from.


    The researchers collected samples of snow in flasks © ALFRED-WEGENER-INSTITUT / MINE TEKMAN

    The majority appeared to be composed of natural materials like plant cellulose and animal fur. But there were also particles of plastic, along with fragments of rubber tyres, varnish, paint and possibly synthetic fibres.

    The lead scientist, Dr Melanie Bergmann, told BBC News:
    "We expected to find some contamination but to find this many microplastics was a real shock."
    She said:
    "It's readily apparent that the majority of the microplastic in the snow comes from the air."
    Microplastics are defined as those particles below 5mm in size.

    Addressing their potential effects on people, Dr Bergmann explained:
    "We don't know if the plastics will be harmful to human health or not. But we need to take much better care of the way we're treating our environment."
    The scientists also analysed snow from sites in Germany and Switzerland. Samples taken from some areas of Germany showed higher concentrations than in the Arctic.

    How is plastic pollution reaching the Arctic?
    The researchers think microplastics are being blown about by winds and then - through mechanisms which are not fully understood - transported long distances through the atmosphere.

    The particles are then "washed" out of the atmosphere through precipitation, particularly snow.

    A study published in April by a British-French team showed that microplastics were falling from the sky onto the French Pyrenees, another supposedly pristine region.

    Previously, research groups have found plastics in the atmospheric fallout of Dongguan, China, Tehran in Iran, and Paris, France.

    As for where the pollution is coming from, here too there are uncertainties.

    The presence of so many varnish particles in the Arctic was a puzzle.

    The researchers assume that some of the contamination may have come from ships grinding against the ice. But they also speculate that some may have come off wind turbines.

    The fibre fragments may be from people's clothing, although it's not possible to tell at the moment.

    Dr Bergmann explained:
    "We have to ask - do we need so much plastic packaging? Do we need all the polymers in the paints we use? Can we come up with differently designed car tyres? These are important issues."
    Dr Eldbjørg Sofie Heimstad, from the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, Kjeller, who was not involved in the latest study, told me that some of the particle pollution was local and some had drifted from afar.

    She said:
    "We know that most of what we are analysing up there and measuring are long-range transported pollution coming from [Europe], from Asia, coming from all over the world.

    "Some of these chemicals have properties that are a threat for the ecosystem, for living animals."
    What does this mean for the Arctic?
    The results follow on the heels of our exclusive report last year that the highest concentrations of plastic particles in the ocean were to be found in Arctic sea-ice.

    Plastic waste is also drifting for hundreds or even thousands of kilometres to land on remote Arctic beaches.

    It is depressing news for people who have regarded the far north as one of the last pristine environments on Earth.

    At a dog sledding centre near Tromsø in the Norwegian Arctic, one of the staff, Lili, told us:
    "It makes me incredibly sad. We've got plastics in the sea-ice. We've got plastics in the ocean and on the beaches. Now plastic in snow.

    "Up here we see the beauty of it every day, and to see that it's changing so much and being tainted - it hurts."
    ================================================

    Kept out of the picture: Disintegrating satellites on re-entry.
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    Default Re: Dust Particles Influence On The Weather AND Earth's Climate

    'Mystery' eruption that cooled ancient world traced to El Salvador's Ilopango volcano

    Katherine Kornei Science
    Fri, 16 Aug 2019 08:00 UTC


    © NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS; U.S./JAPAN ASTER SCIENCE TEAM

    The sixth century was a rough time to be alive: Lower-than-average temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere triggered crop failure, famine, and maybe even the onset of bubonic plague. The ultimate culprit, scientists say, were two back-to-back volcanic eruptions — one in 536 C.E. and another around 540 C.E. The first likely happened in Iceland or North America. But the location of the second one has remained a mystery — until now.

    Researchers studying ancient deposits from El Salvador's Ilopango volcano knew that a massive eruption had taken place there sometime between the third and sixth centuries. That event, dubbed Tierra Blanca Joven (TBJ), or "white young earth," sent a volcanic plume towering nearly 50 kilometers into the atmosphere.

    To better pin down the date of this eruption, the scientists collected slices from three tree trunks embedded in TBJ volcanic ash 25 to 30 kilometers from the present-day lake that covers the caldera (above). The tropical hardwood trees likely died after being engulfed by the searing hot, gale-force winds containing the volcanic gases, ash, and pumice that would have swept outward after the eruption.

    Back in the lab, the researchers estimated the ages of different parts of the slices by counting their rings and using carbon-14 dating. The multiple measurements yielded much more precise dates than could have been gotten from single measurements.

    The three trees all died between 500 and 545 C.E., dates that suggest the TBJ eruption was the mysterious 540 C.E. volcanic event, the researchers report today in Quaternary Science Reviews. In fact, their dating may be even more precise than that: Based on atmospheric circulation patterns, the researchers estimate that the eruption actually occurred in the fall of 539 C.E. That would help explain the era's ongoing global cooling and famine — and could even shed light on a mysterious, temporary break in monument building by the Maya.


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    Default Re: Dust Particles Influence On The Weather AND Earth's Climate

    Ancient Rome Was Teetering. Then a Volcano Erupted 6,000 Miles Away.

    By Katherine Kornei
    June 22, 2020

    Scientists have linked historical political instability to a number of volcanic events, the latest involving an eruption in the Aleutian Islands.


    An 18th-century depiction of the Battle of Actium, in 31 B.C., Johann Georg Platzer, an Austrian painter. The battle is generally seen as marking the end of the Roman Republic, as Mark Antony and Cleopatra’s forces were defeated by Octavian, who consolidated power to become the first Roman emperor.Credit...V&A Images, via Alamy

    Chaos and conflict roiled the Mediterranean in the first century B.C. Against a backdrop of famine, disease and the assassinations of Julius Caesar and other political leaders, the Roman Republic collapsed, and the Roman Empire rose in its place. Tumultuous social unrest no doubt contributed to that transition — politics can unhinge a society. But so can something arguably more powerful.

    Scientists on Monday announced evidence that a volcanic eruption in the remote Aleutian Islands, 6,000 miles away from the Italian peninsula, contributed to the demise of the Roman Republic. That eruption — and others before it and since — played a role in changing the course of history.

    In recent years, geoscientists, historians and archaeologists have joined forces to investigate the societal impacts of large volcanic eruptions. They rely on an amalgam of records — including ice cores, historical chronicles and climate modeling — to pinpoint how volcanism affected civilizations ranging from the Roman Republic to Ptolemaic Egypt to pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.

    There’s nuance to this kind of work, said Joseph Manning, a historian at Yale University who has studied the falls of Egyptian dynasties.
    “It’s not ‘a volcano erupts and a society goes to hell.’” But the challenge is worth it, he said.

    “We hope in the end that we get better history out of it, but also a better understanding of what’s happening to the Earth right now.”
    Sleuthing in Ice


    A sample ice core for use in analyzing the fallout from the Okmok eruption of 43 B.C.Credit...Joseph R. McConnell

    Roughly 1,500 volcanoes are potentially active right now, meaning that they’ve erupted at some point in the last 10,000 years. While scientists today have sophisticated tools to monitor volcanoes, the vast majority of historical eruptions have gone unrecorded, at least by modern scientific instruments. Sussing out those eruptions requires patience and ingenuity, and a willingness to manage a lot of ice.

    At the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nev., it’s not unusual to find researchers in puffy parkas and wool hats handling chunks of ice in a minus 4 Fahrenheit “cold room.” Ice cores, typically drilled vertically from glaciers, hide bits of volcanic material that rained down from long-ago eruptions within their layers.

    Joseph McConnell, a climate scientist at the institute, and his collaborators are in the business of looking for that debris. Using an instrument they designed and built, they melt the ice and pipe the water into an array of sensors. With hundreds of feet of tubing, the setup looks downright chaotic, but it’s exquisitely sensitive. The sensors pinpoint many substances, including about 30 different elements, and they do so by catching just tiny whiffs.
    “They have sensitivities of parts per quadrillion,” Dr. McConnell said.
    Volcanic ash, more generally known as tephra, sometimes hides in ice. It’s a special find because it can be geochemically tied to a specific volcano.
    “The tephra comes from the magma itself,” said Michael Sigl, a chemist at the University of Bern in Switzerland who collaborates with Dr. McConnell.

    “It carries the composition of the rocks.”
    Sulfur is also indicative of a past eruption. Sulfur dioxide, a gas commonly belched by erupting volcanoes, reacts with water in the atmosphere to create sulfate aerosols. These tiny particles can linger in the stratosphere for years, riding wind currents, but they, like tephra, eventually fall back to Earth.

    The ice also carries a time stamp. Dr. McConnell and his colleagues look for variations in elements like sodium, which is found in sea spray that’s seasonally blown inland.
    "By simply counting annual variations in these elements, it’s possible to trace the passage of time," Dr. McConnell said.

    “It’s like a tree-ring record.”
    Dr. McConnell and his collaborators recently analyzed six ice cores drilled in the Arctic. In layers of ice corresponding to the early months of 43 B.C., they spotted large upticks in sulfur and, crucially, bits of material that were probably tephra. The timing caught the scientists’ attention.

    Researchers have previously hypothesized that an environmental trigger may have helped set in motion the crop failures, famines and social unrest that plagued the Mediterranean region at that time. But until now, “There hasn’t been the kind of data that these scholars brought forth to really get those theories into the mainstream,” said Jessica Clark, a historian of the Roman Republic at Florida State University who was not involved in the research.

    Gill Plunkett, a paleoecologist at Queen’s University Belfast, set out sleuthing. After extracting 35 pieces of tephra from the ice, she pored over the rock chemistry of likely volcanic suspects. Nicaragua’s Apoyeque. Italy’s Mount Etna. Russia’s Shiveluch.

    But it was Okmok, a volcano in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, that turned out to be the best match, at least on paper. Sealing the deal would require testing two tephra samples — one from the ice and one from Okmok — on the same instrument.

    Dr. Plunkett arranged for a tephra handoff at a conference in Dublin. A colleague from the Alaska Volcano Observatory, Kristi Wallace, packed four bags of Okmok tephra in her carry-on luggage. The match was spot on, Dr. Plunkett said. “There are some events that are tricky. With Okmok, there’s nothing else that looks like it.”

    Cold and Wet, a World Away


    Okmok erupting in July 2008 on Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.Credit...C.A. Neal/Alaska Volcano Observatory/United States Geological Survey

    This eruption was one of the largest of the last few millenniums, Dr. McConnell and his collaborators concluded, and the sulfate aerosols it created remained in the stratosphere for several years. These tiny particles are particularly good at reflecting sunlight, which means they can temporarily alter Earth’s climate.
    “They’ve created, for a short term, global cooling events,” said Jessica Ball, a volcanologist at the California Volcano Observatory, who was not involved in the research.
    There’s good evidence that the Northern Hemisphere was colder than normal around 43 B.C. Trees across Europe grew more slowly that year, and a pine forest in North America experienced an unusually early autumn freeze. Using climate models to simulate the impact of an Okmok eruption, Dr. McConnell and his collaborators estimated that parts of the Mediterranean, roughly 6,000 miles away, would have cooled by as much as 13.3 degrees Fahrenheit.
    “It was bloody cold,” Dr. McConnell said.
    Rain patterns changed as well — some regions would have been drenched by 400 percent more precipitation than normal, the modeling revealed.

    That climate shock came at precisely the wrong time, Dr. Clark said. “This was a period of Mediterranean-wide political, social and economic upheaval.”

    These cold, wet conditions would have almost certainly decimated crops, Dr. McConnell and his colleagues said. Historical records compiled by Roman writers and philosophers note food shortages and famines. In 43 B.C., Mark Antony, the Roman military leader, and his army had to subsist on wild fruit, roots, bark and “animals never tasted before,” the philosopher Plutarch wrote.

    For a society already reeling from the assassination of Julius Caesar the year before, such trying conditions might have exacerbated social unrest, the researchers concluded. They might even have kick-started transfers of political power that led to the rise of the Roman Empire.
    “It’s an incredible coincidence that it happened exactly in the waning years of the Roman Republic when things were falling apart,” said Dr. McConnell, who published the team’s results in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
    Karen Holmberg, an archaeologist at New York University who studies volcanic events and was not involved in the research, said she found the study “compelling and persuasive.”

    Unfortunately, the archaeological record doesn’t often record volcanic eruptions, she said, except in cases of very nearby eruptions when there’s an obvious layer of tephra. The links in the study are probable, but not definite. “They’re not being heavy handed and saying this is absolutely it,” Dr. Holmberg said.

    Nile Interrupted


    A ninth-century Nilometer in Rhoda Island, central Cairo, Egypt.Credit...Prisma by Dukas Presseagentur GmbH, via Alamy

    Around the same time, another great civilization was also feeling the effects of volcanism, including the Okmok eruption. But rather than reeling from climatic variability, this society was being rattled by changes in a critical resource: water.

    Egyptian society, before the installation of the Aswan Low Dam in the early 20th century, was anchored by the annual summer flooding of the Nile River. These summer floods, sustained by monsoon rains in the highlands of Ethiopia, delivered irrigation and silt, both critical to Egypt’s agrarian society. “The whole rhythm of the year was built around responding to the flood,” Dr. Manning of Yale said.

    But volcanic eruptions, even those on the other side of the world, could have disrupted that flooding, Dr. Manning and his colleagues recently showed. Using records from Cairo’s Nilometer — an octagonal marble column that was used for recording Nile flood height from 622 to 1902 A.D., the team found that flooding tended to be weaker, or entirely absent, during years when there was a large volcanic eruption somewhere in the world.

    Dr. Manning and his collaborators next mined roughly 100 papyrus records to qualitatively estimate flooding during the Ptolemaic dynasty, which lasted from 305 to 30 B.C. Again, they found that the Nile typically flooded weakly, if at all, at the time of large eruptions.

    The culprit, the team reasoned in a paper published a few years ago, was cooling caused by sulfate aerosols. When Earth cools after a large eruption, its atmospheric circulation patterns change. That can shift the invisible meeting point of Northern and Southern Hemisphere trade winds — the Intertropical Convergence Zone — that affects where monsoon rains tend to fall. When less precipitation falls over Ethiopia, home to a major tributary of the Nile, there’s less water available for flooding that year.

    Ptolemaic-era records revealed that this reduced flooding had socioeconomic and political consequences. Revolts increased in the years following “Nile failure,” Dr. Manning and his colleagues found. Priestly decrees — intended to establish the political legitimacy of Greek rulers — also became more commonplace.

    Reinforcing elite authority during times of turmoil makes sense, Dr. Manning said.
    “Bad flooding is interpreted as having a bad king in office.”
    Mystery Eruptions

    Volcanic eruptions have left fingerprints on other societies, too. They’ve been tied to economic decline in sixth-century pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and famine-induced migration in eastern China in the 10th century. Eruptions have potentially helped trigger widespread outbreaks of disease, such as the Justinian plague around 540 A.D. Just over a decade ago, an eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull led to the costly closure of a wide swath of European air space.

    Questions persist, however, for geoscientists, historians and archaeologists alike. Having more ice core records might reveal the identities of orphan eruptions, their sulfur signatures in ice cores still unpinned to a parent volcano, said Robert Dull, a paleoecologist at California Lutheran University who studies volcanic eruptions.
    “There are still large unsourced mystery eruptions up until the early 19th century.”
    A better understanding of how societies were structured is also important. Increased knowledge of trade patterns, for instance, would shed light on how a crop failure in one geographic area would have trickle-down effects throughout a wider region, Dr. Dull said. “You need to understand how human beings were connected.”

    Right now, roughly a dozen volcanoes are erupting. In all likelihood, they’re nothing to worry about — it’s doubtful you’ve even heard of them. But every once in a while, there’s bound to be a really big eruption. How its effects ripple around the world awaits to be seen.
    “Okmok volcano is not exactly a commonly known threat,” Dr. Holmberg said.

    “But then neither was Eyjafjallajökull.”

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    Default Re: Dust Particles Influence On The Weather AND Earth's Climate

     

    "A Bill Gates Venture Aims To Spray Dust Into The Atmosphere To Block The Sun. What Could Go Wrong?"

    This guy should just tattoo "moron" on his forehead ...

    "Microsoft’s billionaire founder Bill Gates is financially backing the development of sun-dimming technology that would potentially reflect sunlight out of Earth’s atmosphere, triggering a global cooling effect. The Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx), launched by Harvard University scientists, aims to examine this solution by spraying non-toxic calcium carbonate (CaCO3) dust into the atmosphere — a sun-reflecting aerosol that may offset the effects of global warming.

    Widespread research into the efficacy of solar geoengineering has been stalled for years due to controversy. Opponents believe such science comes with unpredictable risks, including extreme shifts in weather patterns not dissimilar to warming trends we are already witnessing. Environmentalists similarly fear that a dramatic shift in mitigation strategy will be treated as a green light to continue emitting greenhouse gases with little to no changes in current consumption and production patterns.

    ...

    Again, these temperature decreases bring with them serious risks. Freezing temperatures in 1815 led to failed crops in near-famine conditions. British scientists have cited stratospheric aerosols from volcanic eruptions in Alaska and Mexico as the potential cause of drought in Africa’s Sahel region. Major disruption of the global climate could bring unintended consequences, negatively impacting highly populated regions and engineering another refugee crisis."



    https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielco...ncerns-linger/
    When you are one step ahead of the crowd, you are a genius.
    Two steps ahead, and you are deemed a crackpot.

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    Default Re: Dust Particles Influence On The Weather AND Earth's Climate

    ...

    ... New Study Calls Geoengineering “Planetary Treason” as Earth’s Biosphere is Collapsing Due to Jet-Sprayed Aerosolized Coal Fly Ash

    September 15, 2022

    Comments by Brian Shilhavy
    Editor, Health Impact News



    James Marvin Herndon, PhD., from the Transdyne Corporation in San Diego, and Mark Whiteside, the Medical Director of the Florida Department of Health in Monroe County, have just published a study in the “Advances In Social Sciences Research Journal” titled: Collapse of Earth’s Biosphere: A Case of Planetary Treason.

    Here is the Abstract:
    Earth’s life support systems are breaking down, including the stratospheric ozone layer, which protects all higher life on the planet from deadly ultraviolet radiation. This breakdown is a direct result of human activities including the large-scale manipulation of processes that affect Earth’s climate, otherwise known as geoengineering. We present further evidence that coal fly ash, utilized in tropospheric aerosol geoengineering, is the primary cause of stratospheric ozone depletion, not chlorofluorocarbons, as “decreed” by the Montreal Protocol. The misdiagnosis was a potentially fatal mistake by mankind. Coal fly ash particles, uplifted to the stratosphere, are collected and trapped by polar stratospheric clouds. In springtime, as these clouds begin to melt/evaporate, multiple coal fly ash compounds and elements are released to react with and consume stratospheric ozone. Contrary to the prevailing narrative, the stratospheric ozone layer has already been badly damaged and now increasingly deadly ultraviolet radiation, UV-B and UV-C, penetrates to Earth’s surface. Our time is short to permanently end all geoengineering activities, and to reduce and/or eliminate all sources of aerosolized coal fly ash, including first and foremost the jet-sprayed emplacements into the troposphere that are systematically breaking down Earth’s support systems and poisoning life on this planet.
    At the end of the study they conclude:
    All geoengineering must cease. All sources of aerosolized coal fly ash must be reduced and eliminated. Tropospheric jet-spraying of coal fly ash and any other particulate matter must cease and desist. That is necessary to salvage what we can of Earth’s vital life support systems, including the stratospheric ozone layer.
    Read the full study here.

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    Default Re: Dust Particles Influence On The Weather AND Earth's Climate

    ...

    ... Underwater volcano eruption caused global “dimming” that deprived crops of sunlight; more famine and starvation to come

    Thursday, November 10, 2022 by: Ethan Huff

    This article may contain statements that reflect the opinion of the author


    (Natural News) In January, an underwater volcano in the South Pacific called Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai erupted, sending a massive ash plume up into the sky where it reached 187,000 feet. The result was a cloud of darkness that created a global “diming” effect that will probably be felt for years to come with reduced crop yields.

    You see, crops need unimpeded sunlight to reach their full potential. And all that persistent ash and water vapor that was left behind from the eruption prevented that sunlight from reaching the earth’s surface.

    The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai eruption is said to be the first ever recorded that broke through the third layer of the atmosphere, called the mesosphere. (Related: Hundreds of climate scientists have called for Bill Gates’ “sun dimming” projects to be immediately halted.)
    “It’s an extraordinary result as we have never seen a cloud of any type this tall before,” said Dr. Simon Proud, who authored a study about the eruption.
    “Furthermore, the ability to estimate the height in the way we did, using the parallax method, is only possible now that we have good satellite coverage. It wouldn’t have been possible a decade or so ago.”

    Volcanos are much bigger contributors to “global warming” than human activity

    More energy than the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful nuclear bomb ever detonated, was released by Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai, which blasted 20,000 Olympic swimming pools’ worth of water straight into the stratosphere.

    This massive atmospheric river, so to speak, blanketed portions of the earth with sun-blocking moisture, not to mention all the ash and other particulate debris that went soaring.
    “Due to the ozone layer absorbing solar ultraviolet radiation, temperatures in the stratosphere and mesosphere actually increase with height,” reports explain about the phenomenon that occurred.
    It has been said that a single volcanic eruption blasts more “warming” chemicals into the air than several years’ worth of humans driving vehicles. This makes volcanos the number-one cause of “global warming.”

    Volcanic eruptions are also a major cause of crop-destroying climate change, it would seem, as they interfere with natural sunlight reaching the surface of the earth as intended.

    It is important to point this out because too many climate fanatics are oblivious to the fact that nature itself is engaging in climate-destructive behavior – so should we ban nature and force it to go “green?”

    Such a question of course makes no sense, but it puts into perspective all the climate lunacy that passes as “science” these days – lunacy that is paid for with your tax dollars, by the way.

    The Hunga Tonga and Hunga Ha’apai eruption reportedly caused the island kingdom of Tonga to become blanketed in toxic ash that poisoned local drinking water supplies and wiped out at least two villages. Crops were also destroyed in large quantities.

    Ocean waves from the eruption also triggered an environmental disaster at an oil tanker offloading near Lima, Peru, which generated a massive oil slick along the coast.
    “Just think of all that CO2 being released,” noted a commenter about the greenhouse gases emitted by the Hunga Tonga and Hunga Ha’apai eruption. “It really puts the tiny contributions of humans into perspective when compared to nature.”
    “Did nobody tell the volcano that it must pay a load of tax if it wants to do that?” joked another person.
    “All of this contributes to natural climate changes and there’s nothing we can do about any of it,” noted someone else. “It’s ridiculous to think that we can stop the climate from changing all on its own. We have to just accept it.”
    The latest climate-related news coverage can be found at Climate.news.


    Sources for this article include:
    DailyMail.co.uk
    NaturalNews.com

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    Default Re: Dust Particles Influence On The Weather AND Earth's Climate

    ...

    ... The UN discusses darkening the skies to combat climate change

    Igor Chudov
    igorchudov.substack.com
    Wed, 01 Mar 2023 00:00 UTC


    Sky-dimming technology under consideration © UNEP

    A new report from the UN was just published. It proposes and discusses ways to cool our planet by restricting sunlight and darkening our skies.

    What is this about? Why block sunlight, of all things? Let me explain.

    The UN is worried about climate change. As the efforts to reduce CO2 emissions are faltering, the UN is looking for more ways to cool the Earth. The UNEP's report details ideas called "Solar Radiation Modification," the gist of which is to reflect sunlight and prevent it from heating the surface of our planet.

    Here are the main ideas that the UN will consider:
    • Injecting reflective nanoparticles/sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere (stratospheric aerosol injection)
    • Brightening of low clouds over the ocean by seeding ocean clouds with submicron salt particles
    • Using space mirrors, that is, many giant mirrors launched into outer space to reflect sunlight.
    The UN explains that should the "global stakeholders" decide to proceed, the skies could be darkened within only a few years:
    SRM is the only option that could cool the planet within years. To be effective at limiting global warming, SRM would need to be maintained for several decades to centuries, depending on the pace of emissions reductions and carbon removal.
    The report does pay lip service to what is undeniable:
    • This is an untested planetary intervention
    • There could be disparate effects on certain regions
    However, you and I can guess we should not expect a careful, conservative review of such proposals by the UN if the "Covid vaccine" experience is any guide.

    Injecting Sulfur Dioxide Into the Sky Was Bad for Us - Now It is Good Again

    The report explains:
    Major volcanic eruptions, which introduce large amounts of sulphate particles into the stratosphere, provide a natural analogue for SRM deployment (Figure 4). For example, the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption caused global annual-mean cooling of about 0.3-0.5°C in the following two years. An SAI deployment would inject aerosols continuously into the stratosphere. It is estimated that continuous injection rates of 8-16 Tg of sulphur dioxide (SO2) per year (approximately equivalent to the estimated injection amount of Mount Pinatubo in the single year of 1991) would reduce global mean temperature by 1°C. An operational SAI deployment could be scaled up to produce global cooling of 2-5°C, albeit with diminishing returns at higher rates of injections.
    You are probably not a chemist, and neither am I. However, sulfur dioxide was a free byproduct of coal and oil burning, emitted into the atmosphere until recent decades. Environmental activists and authorities concluded that sulfur dioxide was a pollutant gas contributing to the phenomenon of acid rain and causing significant health problems.

    Having been assured that sulfur dioxide was bad for us, we spent billions of dollars eliminating it from coal and oil-burning emissions and building sulfur-capture technology to keep SO2 out of the atmosphere.

    Now, it turns out that sulfur dioxide is good for us, and we need to spend even more untold billions to inject it into the atmosphere.

    Does this sound stupid to you?

    I am sure, however, that investors will earn quite a bit of money from "sulfur dioxide atmospheric injections" right after making billions on "eliminating sulfur dioxide emissions" from coal-burning plants.

    Volcano Eruptions Were the Nature's Experiments
    The UN document correctly indicates that volcanic eruptions sometimes fill the skies with ash or sulfur, dim the sun for years, and lead to measurable global cooling episodes. The example listed in the report is the above-mentioned Mt. Pinatubo eruption in 1991, which temporarily cooled our planet by 0.5 degrees C.

    However, much darker pages of human history were associated with volcanoes causing catastrophic climate changes.

    For example, in 1600, the eruption of the Huaynaputina in Peru caused famines in Europe and led to mass deaths.
    In Russia, 1601-1603 brought the worst famine in the country's history, leading to the overthrow of the reigning tsar. Records from Switzerland, Latvia and Estonia record exceptionally cold winters in 1600-1602; in France, the 1601 wine harvest was late, and wine production collapsed in Germany and colonial Peru. In China, peach trees bloomed late, and Lake Suwa in Japan had one of its earliest freezing dates in 500 years.
    So, such global sun-dimming projects may indeed cause global cooling at the cost of poisoning the atmosphere, causing acid rain, and leading to the collapse of agriculture in several regions of the world.

    In addition, blocked sunlight will prevent the uptake of CO2 by plants because converting CO2 into plant matter and oxygen needs sunlight:


    Photosynthesis © Wikipedia

    Somehow, the dimmed sunlight inhibiting CO2 sequestration (uptake), and lowering food production, does not bother the proponents of Solar Radiation Modification. And how would solar panels run without the sun?

    These are not immediately-actionable plans yet. In some ways, the UN report is exploratory. Nobody is building giant sulfur-dioxide-injecting smokestacks or is launching mirrors into space, as of now.

    However, the usual stakeholders, such as Bill Gates, are preparing the right conditions for this to happen:


    © Popular Mechanics

    If This Sounds Crazy to You, Do Not Blame Me!
    Imagine a hypothetical layperson named Charlie. Charlie is a reasonable, caring, intelligent, but not well-informed individual who has never heard of sky dimming before. Charlie has a friend named Igor, who reads a wide variety of news and uses mostly reliable sources, such as the UN's official documents from the UNEP or news magazines such as Popular Mechanics.

    If Igor informed Charlie that one of the richest men in the world had convinced the United Nations to seriously consider dimming the sky over the entire planet, injecting acid-rain-causing sulfur gas into the atmosphere, and potentially causing famines in some regions, Charlie would consider the messenger, Igor, a crazy conspiracy theorist.

    It is not possible! Charlie would say. Take off your tinfoil hat Igor and get a life. That would be Charlie's likely answer to such news. Our leading authorities, Charlie would assert, would certainly never consider forcing the entire world to implement such crazy ideas!

    The problem is that these disturbing ideas are completely real. This is not even the first time reckless global plans were implemented with the UN backing.

    Those same people just made the entire world take unproven Covid vaccines that saw no long-term testing and ended up not working.

    Sharing news about these plans is, therefore, a challenge due to the inherent insanity of what the plans propose. I discussed such challenges before, also mentioning sky dimming.

    Meanwhile, a path is being laid toward such proposals becoming a reality.

    Bill Gates is not messing around. Will his sky-darkening plans come to fruition?


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